What's it all about... I keep seeing things like =D, =P and others, I suppose that =D is smiling so why can't people just use or if really happy , one of the ones on here that use this method a lot is Daniel it might mean a lot to him but to others on here it don't mean anything. Now I see serenity in another thread used =P what does that mean.

What's it all about... I keep seeing things like =D, =P and others, I suppose that =D is smiling so why can't people just use or if really happy

Well it's tricky because most IM applications automatically recognise these expression and convert them to the appropriate expression. PHPBB is the only service I've used with such odd code for an emoticon, for example, . is ":lol:"???

Haha! It's a force of habit for me. I'm very used to just typing out a smilie like =) and =P that I hardly think about using the actual emoticons anymore (except maybe on deviantart to emphasize my feelings). The actual code to using them differ on every forum, so I just use what I use in e-mails, IM, etc. I've just grown accustomed to using the equal sign as "eyes" instead of the usual colon for the regular smilie...

A co-worker of mine really liked it when I used >:-[ to show my anger once in the internal IM.